Tag Archives: Underage

At the age of 16, i was the only woman employed in a family business who wasn’t related to the owner. After about 6 months and a promotion, i was finally being seen for my skills and i had proven myself (i was an assistant advertiser and advisor for website creation). There was one particular day in the office when the owner and another male co-worker came in later because they had been working form home. I was slightly bent over the desk writing things down whilst on the phone. The two of them stopped dean in their tracks and one whistled at me. The owner then said ‘thats the real reason I hired her’. I was mortified, knowing that the only reason I (who was 16!!!) was hired was because I looked ‘pretty’. Other things happened too that made me uncomfortable: 1. I had to clear all of the computers search histories and all cached data to speed them up, I found that the owner had been watching porn whilst i was in the office sat in the desk opposite him. 2. Another male coworker left so I cleared his desk only to find a thick stack of the suns page 3’s (around 4 months worth) under the desk pad. 3. the owner once had an affair, and showed me a photo of the woman, she was naked, and his current wife was in the adjacent room. He said he paid this woman for sex whilst she was at university and worked at me. The only good thing that came out of that job was the support i got from the other women in the office, whilst the owner did recognise me for my talents, i was more of a ‘pretty play thing’ in the office.

I’m too young to experience any of the everyday sexism, but my sister is not. She is only 16 but one day when she was walking our three dogs an adult man walked up to her and grabbed her wrist then starred at her breasts and said ‘your hot’ then ran away.

I’ve always been a bit odd, especially when I was a younger girl in grades 3-5. I loved anime, dinosaurs, Pokémon, catching frogs, and especially drawing, which I still immensely enjoy doing. This meant I didn’t have any girls for friends until 5th grade, because apparently I wasn’t allowed to like dinosaurs AND play with my own gender, who did crafts and played with Barbies, mostly. Thankfully, my family is very liberal and understanding and encouraged whatever it was I was interested in, especially my dad. Because of my so-called ‘boy’ interests, I often spent a lot of time playing with my male cousin, who is about 6 months older than me. We’d do stupid stuff like jump off of his bunk bed onto a pile of pillows, run around the house in socks to see who would slip and fall first, etc. Around maybe age 8 or 9, something… happened. I can’t recall the exact occasion, but he started telling me things about his body, then asking things about mine, which I still believe was just confusion and curiosity of developing. This is hard to confess, but his questions turned more into light demands, like if I’d show him my breasts or pull down my panties. I had no idea what was really happening, but him being 9 and knowing he could get me to do pretty much anything meant he was getting sexist ideas from somewhere. I don’t know precisely when it became definite incest. I performed oral sex for him, but I’m thankful that when I complained of it feeling gross, he didn’t ask for it again. We sometimes made out, and still, I saw it as just showing our familial love in a different way. I think he knew it was wrong. As we grew older, our physical contact lessened, and eventually stopped. After turning 11, we never spoke about it. Ever. Now I’m still trying to figure out if it was sexual assault or baiting, but I agreed to everything before doing it, so I’m not sure. I’m also worried he may be in another incestuous relationship with his older brother; they often sleep in the same bed when coming home from college, make lewd comments complimenting each other, and my older cousin will joke that he doesn’t need a girlfriend when he’s got his brother. I’d talk about it with them, but I don’t want it to lead to revealing what I did with my younger cousin. Still trying to figure his advances out.

I remember my first experience of everyday sexism clearly: I was 13 or 14 and waiting for the bus alone on a sunny Saturday afternoon. A car stopped, a man (in his 50s) lowered the window to ask; “how much?”. I didn’t even realise what he wanted. A couple of years later I started going to the gym. It didn’t last long. There was a guy (40 years old, married) who could not take his eyes off me all the time. Until he started making conversation with me and finally asked if he could take me out for icecream. I never went back. These episodes happened when I was underage and are not the only ones but those the stand out to me for being particularly offensive.

When I was 16, just 3 years ago. My female Youth Pastor pulled me aside at a youth retreat in which we were about to go play games in the gym upstairs. She told me to change out of my yoga pants because they were inappropriate and showed off too much of my butt. I told her it was my body and I didn’t really mind. She then yelled at me and continued to explain that the boys would come to her and tell her that when the girls dressed in this manner it made them have sinful thoughts. That I was the distraction. That I was causing the boys to sin. I told her they need to control their thoughts then. She said no. She said that boys naturally have these thoughts. That this is normal for boys to do and we need to help them by covering our bodies. In which my Aunt promptly agrees with her statements. They made me question my budding feminist beliefs at the age. They made me think maybe they were right. That maybe boys couldn’t control these thoughts. They made me feel so ashamed of myself that I went and changed. To this day the memory will just pop up into my head and it makes me feel disgusted.